Currently, small and thin cameras have a collection of lenses that are moved to and from an image sensor to focus on a particular scene. To make this movement of the lenses, many devices rely on voice-coil motors (VCMs), which use some form of mechanical spring along with an electromagnet. The spring draws the lenses one direction and the electromagnet, under control of the device, moves the lenses an opposite direction. These lens elements are often placed within a barrel or cylindrical housing, which moves along a track within another structure. These current structures permit good imaging for cameras within small or thin devices.
These current devices, however, permit the housing to cant or tilt. This canting, even at a very small angle, can reduce image quality, especially for array cameras. Array cameras have multiple image sensors and lens collections to capture multiple images. Array cameras then combine these multiple captured images to create a final resulting image that is of high quality. The quality of this resulting image, however, can be substantially reduced with even a very small amount of cant in any one of the lens collections.
The cant is often caused by the springs and the electromagnets not being in perfect balance, for example, one spring being stronger than the other or one area of the electromagnet having a stronger force on it, or caused by it, than another area. When this happens, two problems arise, a loss of focus on some area of the image sensor or an image capture that is misaligned. The first problem affects even a camera with a single image sensor, while both affect array cameras. Loss in image quality for array cameras can also be due to the effect on the camera's intrinsic matrix when different lens collections cant differently, which adversely affects array camera calibration, causing the eventual fused image to be fused improperly.
This background description is provided for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Unless otherwise indicated herein, material described in this section is neither expressly nor impliedly admitted to be prior art to the present disclosure or the appended claims.